Wheelies and waistcoats at the Brompton world championship

Times

5 days ago

It was a balmy weekend morning in north London and two men in floral shirts were being pursued by a butterfly. Not far behind came a giant bee on two wheels. Such was the intensity of the heat — and I don't mean the sun had got to me. These specimens of the natural world were taking part in cycling's most eccentric world championship.
Some 500 competitors from 25 countries had come to King's Cross to race five times round a 900-metre circuit on a Brompton. The contest had been going in various countries since 2006 but it had come home to mark the 50th anniversary of this folding bicycle's invention.
'The event started in Barcelona, slightly as a joke,' said Will Butler-Adams, the chief executive of Brompton. 'To be fair, it still is a bit of a joke.' That doesn't mean there weren't some serious athletes — the men's champion, Alec Briggs, runs the Tekkerz professional cycling team and also took the world title in 2019 — but the field didn't take themselves too seriously. Lycra was strictly banned; fancy dress encouraged.
'Some people might train, but it's mostly about taking part,' said Butler-Adams, who raced in a Union Jack blazer. I counted lots of bright socks, a few kilts and some in suit and tie, which was a nod to the bicycle's heritage as a commuter vehicle but must have been sweltering in the 31C heat. It was bad enough for me wearing a Newlane folding helmet, shorts and polo shirt.
And then there were the real oddballs: a man in a top hat and ruff; someone in gold leotard and tinsel wig; a couple of marshmallows; a bloke wearing fishnet stockings with the hull of a ship around his waist as a kind of tutu; another chap all in yellow with a head-dress of plastic bananas, peppers and corns on the cob. It matched the eccentricity of the bicycle's brand.
Andrew Ritchie created the lightweight collapsible bicycle in the bedroom of his flat overlooking the Brompton Oratory in Kensington in 1975. After endless rejection letters from investors, his invention took off when it won the best product award at the Cyclex bike show in 1987. From producing 60 bikes a month under the railway arches in Brentford, the company now makes 100,000 a year, all at its factory in Greenford, west London, and sold in almost 50 countries.
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Butler-Adams, who has been with the company for 23 years, said his customers bought the bike because it 'makes them happy'. With 20,000 bicycles reported stolen a year in London, there is an obvious attraction to one you can take indoors, though it is not cheap. They start from £950 and go up to £5,699 for the ultra-light (7.95kg) 12-speed 'T-line' model.
Ritchie was not the first to invent a folding bike but Butler-Adams said the difference was that, as well as looking elegant, it 'rode bloody well'. Proving that this was a serious machine was the motivation for creating a world championship. There are also several national championships in America, Japan, France and elsewhere.
Among those taking part was Sarah Ruggins, who in her youth represented Canada at running before contracting an autoimmune condition that left her unable to walk. After four operations, she took up cycling as a lower-impact activity and has excelled. In 2023 she took part in an unsupported race across Europe and this year she cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats and back — 1,700 miles in five days and eleven hours — taking seven hours off James MacDonald's record.
She rode a Brompton for the first time last week, though, and her biggest concern was over a unique aspect of the race: it begins with a 'Le Mans' start, in which competitors must run to and unfold their bike. 'I've got it down to ten seconds,' she said. 'The first time was about four and half minutes. But for the first time in my cycling career, I'm seeing that you can ride a bike for fun.'
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It was the unfolding that did for me. Never mind my lack of fitness, trying to remember what I had been shown half an hour earlier in the heat of battle (and battling the heat) proved impossible. Was I meant to pull this first or twiddle that? Why are the handlebars the wrong way round? Why doesn't the back wheel just pop out with a shake like it does for others? I felt like Ian Fletcher, the hapless Brompton-owning BBC boss in W1A.
Butler-Adams had warned me about this. While the really nerdy riders measure and log their unfolding time in thousandths of a second, when the knack goes it goes: last year one of the finalists took more than a minute to unfold his. I was comfortably the last one to get away and was lapped after a couple of bends by Briggs.
Kidd sprints hard for the finishing line
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
Still, it was fun once I got going: round by the canal, up a hill, past the gasholders, dog-legging through Granary Square, down a ramp and then a 200-metre sprint(ish) down the straight. By my second lap I had even begun to pass a few at the back.
It should be noted for the record that The Times was the second cyclist home. Admittedly this was with a lap to go, having just been passed for a second time by Briggs during his victory lap. The man with the flag was anxious to clear the track. In the final Briggs won a trip to Luxembourg, a limited-edition bike and a bottle of fizz, as did the women's champion, Honor Elliott. I was just glad to be given a bottle of cold water.
Still, to come in after a world champion, even two laps behind, was not bad for a fat, middle-aged man who hadn't cycled properly in years and had never before unfolded or ridden a Brompton. I later discovered that Briggs, once victory in our heat was assured, had been showboating and performed a wheelie on his final lap. Otherwise, perhaps he would have passed me three times.